Interesting e-petition - Make financial education a compulsory part of the school....

[ZeroHour]

Make financial education a compulsory part of the school curriculum

It's a national disgrace that in the 20 years since introducing student loans, we’ve educated our youth into debt when they go to university, but never about debt. We're a financially illiterate nation, with millions caught by misselling, overborrowing and being ripped off. Is it any surprise we’ve just had a debt imbued financial crisis. This must change. Companies spend billions on marketing and teaching their staff to sell – it's time we got buyers' training. The most cost effective way to start is to ensure every child in the country gets a basic understanding of personal finance & consumer rights before leaving school. This isn’t a large resource requirement. Some schools already do it, but the majority don’t and that needs to end. Unless it's compulsory, head teachers can’t prioritise for it. 97% of people support this, yet no one will take up the baton. We have one of the world’s most complex consumer economies; it's time our children were taught how to thrive and survive in it.

Link

Thoughts?

[Domino]

Absolutely should be part of the curriculum.

From Basic financial ideas and debt up to more complex ideas and Stocks.

We should be teaching kids what they need to deal with in the real world - and having them leave school with no idea how a mortgage works is disgraceful

[kernewek-sam]

Absolutely should be part of the curriculum.

From Basic financial ideas and debt up to more complex ideas and Stocks.

We should be teaching kids what they need to deal with in the real world - and having them leave school with no idea how a mortgage works is disgraceful

Indeed the basics such as budgeting for each month based on income, direct debit and credit cards etc, perhaps including CCJ's and bankruptcy.

[captaincharisma]

I have met people who dont use ATM machines because they dont know how, 100% agree with everything said. I was lucky that my dad taught me most things but also learnt from my own mistakes.

[flyinghaggis]

I think they should probably go one step further and actually teach people what money is (effectively a government issued IOU note) and how it's created/used by banks. In my opinion it's the lack of understanding of this process that's caused people and governments to allow themselves to get so massively into debt to the point where it's become the norm and has come to a head in this latest "so-called" housing/debt crisis [but that's probably a discussion best held in another thread!].

Check out the following pages if you're interested :-

Fractional-reserve banking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Money creation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia